Unfinished Business
by black.k.kat
Summary: Jack settles himself on the edge of his desk and smiles fondly. "That was Ianto," he tells Gwen. "Torchwood Three's ghost. He's been here since at least the 1800's. Can't leave." ON HIATUS.
1. Chapter 1

**Rating:** T

**Warnings: **Major character death (pre-story and, at the moment, off-screen), angst, canon-au-ness.

**Summary:** Jack settles himself on the edge of his desk and smiles fondly. "That was Ianto," he tells Gwen. "Torchwood Three's ghost. He's been here since at least the 1800's. Can't leave."

**Disclaimer: **All recognizable characters are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the creators, and no copyright infringement is intended.

**A/N: **I'd meant to get this chapter to 5k words before I posted it, but that's not looking like it's going to happen. Unfortunately, don't expect any updates and/or new work until at least the 12th, as I'm going on a backpacking trip with my wife, and won't even have cell reception until we get back. That said, I'm sorry for the brevity of this chapter, but consider it a prologue of sorts, as I'll be aiming for 4-5k word chapters from here on out. ¡Adiós, y deséenme suerte!

(Before I manage to forget, Jack's quote is originally from Blaise Pascal, and the title is a Salman Rushdie quote from _The Satanic Verses_: "Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what.")

* * *

_**Unfinished Business**_

Gwen can't do anything but watch in horror as Suzie brings her gun up, finger already twitching on the trigger. She can't do anything to stop this woman, this murderer, from killing again, and this time it will be gorgeous, funny, mysterious Jack, who opened her eyes to everything she never wanted to see before.

He's going to die in less than half a second, and there's nothing she can do.

Except that there suddenly is, because a man shimmers into existence immediately on Suzie's left, startling her enough that she spins and fires automatically.

The gun goes off—not at Gwen, not at Jack, but at the stranger—and Gwen lunges forward, knocking Suzie to the ground as Jack leaps from the invisible lift to help her.

"No, no, is he hurt?" she demands the moment she has the breath, pinning Suzie's arms behind her as the other woman struggles. "I don't think she aimed, but—"

To her surprise, Jack laughs, retrieves Suzie's gun, and says with a flourish, "Gwen Cooper, meet Torchwood's most gorgeous secret. Ianto Jones, meet Gwen Cooper."

Suzie finally goes still, no doubt in surprise, and she and Gwen both look up. The stranger is still standing where he had first appeared, slightly paler than his surroundings. As their eyes settle on him, he smiles politely and nods. "PC Cooper. Charmed."

Then he looks at Jack, smiles softly, and fades away to nothingness.

* * *

Jack has to admit that he's impressed with how well Gwen is handling herself in the wake of so much confusion and mayhem. UNIT coming to take Suzie away was doubtless more than a little terrifying, as a glimpse of what could be, and nearly getting shot and then regaining all of her memories has to be working hell on her nerves, but she's relatively steady as she accepts the cup of tea he hands her. It's not coffee, because only two people are ever allowed to touch the coffee machine (among the living, it's Tosh, which Jack has protested more than once on the grounds of favoritism), but Jack's had more than enough time in Wales to learn how to make a palatable cup of tea.

There's a long pause, where Jack can see Gwen debating whether or not to ask before she finally gives is. "Who was that man?" she asks, looking out over the now-empty Hub. "_What_ was he?"

Jack settles himself on the edge of his desk and smiles fondly. "That was Ianto," he says simply. "Torchwood Three's ghost. He's been here since at least the 1800's. Can't leave."

"And the others don't know?" She can't seem to make up her mind whether to be upset or unnerved. Personally, Jack hopes it's the latter, because there's a very good reason for not telling Owen and Tosh about the incorporeal fifth member of their team. Ianto is _his_, his secret, his ghost, and has been since Alice Guppy first captured him.

"No," Jack says, and his tone is a warning. "They don't. Ianto is a secret, a last line of defense. No one knows he's here except for me—and now, except for you. I want to keep it that way."

* * *

A soft shimmer of ghostly light announces Ianto's appearance in Jack's office, and Jack looks up from his paperwork with a smile.

"Hey," he murmurs.

Ianto smiles in return, sitting carefully on the edge of the desk. "Hey," he returns. "Stop worrying. She'll be a good fit here."

"You think so?" Jack leans back in his chair, tilting his head back to look up at Ianto with a smile. For being even older than Jack, Ianto still looks good, if faintly translucent. The style of the time he died—the turn of the century, Jack guesses, though he's never actually asked—suits him well, and Jack's never found a hunter-green tailcoat and tall black boots quite so sexy before.

"I really do," Ianto returns, glancing out the window of Jack's office. It's dark, everyone else gone. Myfanwy is asleep in her nest, and the Rift monitor is the only sound from the main floor. "She's a bit naïve, but that's true for everyone when they start here, I suppose. Besides." He turns back, favoring Jack with a wry smile. "It's good for you to get out a bit, interact with the living more, instead of being stuck in here with me all the time."

Jack raises an eyebrow at him. "You forget that I _like_ being stuck in here with you," he reminds the ghost, and it's a little painful, achingly bittersweet to see the way Ianto automatically reaches out to him. Jack echoes the movement, their fingers halting just a hair's breadth apart, but Jack can't bring himself to cross that last, tiny gap. It's too much pain, too much hurt, too much disappointment to see his hand pass through Ianto's like air.

There has never, ever, in Jack's long life, been someone for him like Ianto. When Alice Guppy first took him in, trapped him in a torture chair in a small, dark room, Ianto had stepped through the wall and introduced himself with a smile and a tip of his top hat. He'd made the torture bearable, the release afterwards sweet. Jack had stayed at Torchwood Three as a freelance agent, renting quarters there, and Ianto Jones was the reason. _Is_ the reason, because Jack knows he could have found some other way to wait of the Doctor if he really wanted to. But Ianto can't leave Torchwood's grounds, and as long as he's there, Jack will be nearby.

It's probably the closest to true love Jack will ever come.

Really, it probably says something about Jack that he feels that way, but it's true. Ianto is a ghost, intangible for all that he's visible, and Jack is a physical creature, but…

"_Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît pas_," Jack quotes, closing his fingers on empty air and pulling his hand back with an apologetic smile.

Ianto gives him a sad smile, like he knows what Jack's thinking, and leans back again. "'The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.' Indeed," he agrees, adjusting his cravat with a deft touch. "But watch PC Cooper carefully, Jack. She's got a vulnerable heart and a stubborn head; that's never a good combination. I should know." He meets Jack's eyes, raising a hand to his lips and kissing his fingers before blowing a kiss and fading from sight.

It's foolish to think that he can feel a phantom brush of lips against his cheek, but Jack fancies that he does anyway.

* * *

Ianto has been dead for far longer than he was ever alive.

Nevertheless, he's found that _living_ is not an easy habit to break. More than two centuries of being intangible have still failed to teach him that he cannot touch living things, from the largest alien to the smallest plant. The living are beyond his grasp, not matter how much he wishes it were otherwise.

He wouldn't even wish that much, if not for Captain Jack Harkness.

Ianto had been, if not happy, then at least content, haunting Torchwood Three even after his last business had been finished there. Indeed, he'd been ready to move on to whatever was waiting for him until he stepped into the room of Alice Guppy's newest sadistic experiment.

From the very first glimpse, Jack had been different. He'd looked at Ianto and smiled, even in the midst of torture. He'd faced things that no one, even immortal, should have to endure, and borne them with a laugh and a shrug.

He'd taken one look at Ianto, grinned, and asked, "Here to take me into the light, gorgeous? 'Cause if you're offering, I might not refuse."

Ianto had rolled his eyes, stalked back through the wall, and gone to torment Alice a bit more.

And if he'd grown on Ianto eventually, well - Jack Harkness was like a particularly stubborn fungus that way, and Ianto had had little say in the matter.

_Is_ like a particularly stubborn fungs, since nothing at all has changed with Jack's age. Ianto still has just as little to say in matters pertaining to Jack's continued residence at Torchwood Three, even when Ianto _knows_ there must be easier ways to pass the time until the Doctor returns.

Since it seems that Jack is content - for the moment - to remain in his office (not that Ianto would dare think the Captain is actually working; perish the thought), Ianto amuses himself around the Hub, neatening up Owen's desk so the doctor will have a devil of a time finding anything come morning. He takes a bit more care with Tosh's desk, because he likes her, and then spends a few minutes straightening up the rest of the disaster area the team calls a workspace.

Suzie's things get neatly boxed up, left for the others to deal with.

It's times like these - long stretches of night when Jack is too distracted to be fit company, or Ianto isn't in the mood to provide it - that Ianto blesses the fact that he can manipulate anything non-living. Inanimate objcts have never been quite so appealing.

(Sometimes, he has to wonder what the others think happens to their detritus; do they believe it spontaneously combusts? Leaving out the obvious "There's a ghostly butler cleaning up after me," what are the other options? Do they think Myfanwy eats it all?)

Up above, the light in Jack's office goes out. Ianto turns to look at it, even though there's nothing to see, and then carefully sets the last box beside the desk. With a quick push of his foot, he's rising into the air, sliding through stone and metal and up through the floor of Jack's office. Only the coral's light still on, a faint glow in the murky underground dimness of the Hub. Jack's bunker is open, but no sound emerges, no invitation for Ianto to come down and join the Captain.

Ianto tries not to feel a little hurt, but even after all this time, it's still futile. Jack gets to him like no one else.

Jack's desk is a disaster area that even Ianto won't touch, but he still sighs over it and clucks his tongue a little, rolling his eyes. He reaches out, intending to at least remove the coffee mug forming rings on the monthly expense reports, when suddenly a jolt of something like static electricity races over his skin.

Ianto pauses, hesitates, casts his eyes around for whatever it is that's given him his first _feeling_ in over two hundred years.

The glove - _Suzie's_ glove, still laying on Jack's desk from when he refused to hand it over to UNIT - glimmers menacingly in the low light.

It's not a sign of cowardice that Ianto pointedly refuses to touch it from there on out. It's just plain good sense.


	2. Chapter 2

**Rating:** T

**Warnings: **Major character death (pre-story and, at the moment, off-screen), angst, canon-au-ness.

**Summary:** Jack settles himself on the edge of his desk and smiles fondly. "That was Ianto," he tells Gwen. "Torchwood Three's ghost. He's been here since at least the 1800's. Can't leave."

**Disclaimer: **All recognizable characters are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the creators, and no copyright infringement is intended.

**A/N: **Yeah, those 5k words I promised? Not happening. This story wants _desperately_ to be a one-shot, and I had to use all my powers of persuasion on the muse to get her to cooperate. On that note, it starts out in a bit of an odd place, but that's the history major in me showing. For more information, there was a great article a while back (with current relevance, even!) in Bitch Magazine, titled '_Holy Fratrimony: Male Bonding and the New Homosociality_' by Don Romesburg.

On another note, trying to write around my vague dislike of Gwen is _exhausting_. I hope I did her character some sort of justice, but I'm determined to write a Gwen-friendly story if it _kills_ me. (Which, at this point, is a real concern. DX)

**Edit:** I have added an **extra bit** to the end of chapter one, so please, hop back and take a moment to read that over. **IT IS VITAL TO THE PLOT.**

* * *

_**Unfinished Business**_

The world has changed so very much since Ianto was alive.

It's not even the things, so much—though those are _vastly_ different, admittedly—as it is the _people_. Some say that humanity never changes, but Ianto has seen the truth of that with his own eyes, and knows it to be false. Humanity changes. It changes every second that it exists, every second that the world exists around it.

When Ianto was a younger man than he is now—a younger man than he will be for the rest of eternity—he had a good friend, a boy his age. They did everything together, were photographed together, hung over each other's shoulders and pressed their faces together and kissed each other's cheeks, and no one thought it odd or strange, or even commented on it at all. They loved each other, and that was simply how things were.

It was a different time, and Ianto knows that intimately. Belief in God ruled everything, even—or perhaps especially—relationships. Love was from God, and was a thing to be shared. Lust was of Man, and a thing to be hidden away. Gender didn't matter, as that sort of love left little or no place for the physical, only the spiritual. Love for a wife, of course, was lesser, because it was always tainted by lust and sex, while friendships could never be brought low like that.

Or so it was supposed to be.

Ianto knows himself to be weak regarding matters of the flesh—it's been his curse for as long as he can remember, a susceptibility to a sideways look or a soft smile or a pair of broad, brawny shoulders. But for all of that, he's also a product of his time, and—no matter how times, and people, change—will always consider the heart to be in a different sphere than the body.

Perhaps that's why this thing with Jack works, when by all accounts it should have ended before it even began.

Carefully, he perches on the foot of Jack's bed, knowing that he hasn't been invited but not caring, at least not right now. If Jack wanted to keep him out, there's a bag of salt that he thinks Ianto doesn't know about, hidden under his bed. A line of that around the room would have locked Ianto out until Jack saw fit to break it. Maybe it's a bit rude to consider that their version of a locked door, and to ignore everything lesser, but Jack has yet to complain, and in two centuries, there have been a lot of chances.

Besides, it's worth it when Jack sleepily blinks his eyes open, and his gaze immediately lands on Ianto. He smiles, and such an expression shouldn't have the power to flip Ianto's heart upside down in his chest, not when it's been still for over two hundred years, but it does nevertheless.

"Hey," Jack murmurs, stretching his arms over his head and arching his back, then relaxing, each muscle unwinding. One arm drops over the side of the cot, fingertips skimming the cool concrete floor, as the other slides down his chest to curl loosely over his navel. It's an entirely erotic motion, and heats the blood that Ianto no longer truly has. He bites down on his lip, forces himself not to try and touch.

"Not fair, Jack," he reminds the Captain chidingly.

Jack's grin is lazy, contented, and full of enough mock innocence to make a nun blush. "What?" he protests, even as that damnable hand slides lower, fingers spreading. Ianto can hear them rasp through the hair as they drift seemingly without purpose.

Ianto's mouth is dry, and it _shouldn't_ be.

Without pause, he launches himself from the bed, rising up through the ceiling and then darting through the wall—almost through Myfanwy, who seems to have chosen that moment to stretch her wings in early-morning flight. She shrieks at him, offended, and swoops away, and Ianto winces.

From the direction of Jack's bunker, a long, drawn-out moan sends Ianto's heart into double-time, and he curses all randy captains everywhere in the vague hope of impotency.

_This_ is why it's unbelievable that they've lasted so long.

That they've _loved_ each other so long.

But somehow, against all hope and against all sense, they have—and they still do.

* * *

It's the day after their final encounter with the sex-gas alien—and the fact that Gwen can even _think_ that in a remotely serious manner tells her quite a bit about her new line of work—and very early in the morning of her third day at Torchwood when Gwen drags herself into the Hub, still exhausted. But there's a smell in the air akin to heaven, and it fills her lungs like a shot of life.

Following it back to its source is simple common sense.

There's a small but functional kitchen off to one side, and Gwen pauses in the doorway, somehow unsurprised to see Ianto—still vaguely transparent—standing in front of a bewilderingly complex coffee maker. The delicious smell starts here, and Gwen must make some caffeine-deprived sound of need, because the ghost looks around at her and smiles.

"Hello, Gwen," he says politely. "Would you like a cup?"

Gwen manages not to debase herself by moaning, but her "_Yes_," is probably far more fervent than the situation calls for.

Thankfully, Ianto simply looks amused, and takes a mug down from one of the upper shelves. Gwen starts at that.

"You can…touch things?" she asks, not realizing until it's out of her mouth how insensitive that question probably is.

"Only non-living things," Ianto says, filling the mug. "Humans, animals, even plants—I can't even make contact with those, or with anything in close proximity to them. Like an aura of like, I suppose." With a slightly wistful smile, he sets the coffee down on the table, and nods to it. "There you are. It's my own blend, so I hope you like it."

She takes it gratefully, the heat seeping into her wind-chilled fingers and up her arms, sliding down her throat as she takes her first sip. Even black, which she normally hates, it's amazing, full and rich and just bitter enough, but never too much. Gwen sighs, tension she didn't know she was carrying unwinding from her spine, and treats Ianto to a wide smile. "Thank you, Ianto."

The ghost smiles back, and there's a wry sort of _want_ in his eyes. "Did you know," he says with a small twist to his mouth, "that that's the first time in two centuries that someone besides Jack has called me by my name?"

That's a chilling thought, and while Gwen logically knows that Ianto is dead, that he doesn't reveal himself to anyone outside of a dire situation, but she hasn't really _considered_ it, or what it might mean to him. Two hundred years of solitude, at least until Jack came, and that can't have been very long ago at all, relatively, since the Captain doesn't seem much over forty.

Gwen has a sympathetic heart. She's been mocked for it before, understands that it's not normal to bleed so easily for others, to care about someone she's only just met—or even _never_ met. As a child, she used to cry whenever the newscasters talked about death, and it confused her parents to no end. Then as a constable, she'd feel down for weeks after a bad case, and everyone else told her to buck up and accept it and move on. A soft heart was no advantage in their business.

But Gwen _can't_. There's something about sorrow that makes her want to share it, to understand, to empathize. Even when she can't comprehend, even when she'll never entirely be able to grasp a person's situation, something in her still has to _try_.

It's this feeling that has her reaching out, futile as the gesture is. She pauses with her hand hovering in midair, palm upturned, offering sympathy for a situation that she doesn't—_can't_—understand.

But Ianto smiles at the gesture, at the offering, and brings his hand up to cover hers, though an inch of space separates their palms.

"Thank you," he murmurs, and he means it, she can see that much in his eyes.

Then the door alarm goes off, breaking the peace and stillness of the early-morning air, and Ianto fades out of sight, that kind, sad, grateful smile still in place.

Gwen tightens her grip on the coffee and goes to shout a bit at Owen for ruining the moment.

Even if the doctor will never know exactly what it's for.


End file.
